winner, the amazing Andy Rivett. We reached the summit, capped by an ancient tower and affording fantastic, panoramic views of the surrounding country. The leaders, though, didn’t pause for a moment. They just peered at their maps, poking and grumbling

Desert Cup was going along nicely – I’d managed the Cape Wrath ultra without collapsing in a pool of my own bile. I’d jogged a couple of twenties with Oscar, The World’s Fittest Dog, and I can safely say I looked better than he did by the end, as we

is oversubscribed by a factor of five. There remains only the technical question of how one trains for these hyper-mega-ultra events. After all, to prepare for a marathon, you need to put in a handful of 20-mile training runs. So should I bash off three or four 100

-shirts: the Eel Pie Island Ultra (“520 laps in the middle of the historic River Thames”), the Angola Minefield Meander and the 1986 Basra to Baghdad Family Fun Run – all dispatched to the Mencap shop. My God. It really is the end of an era.

and Stanley Matthews football shorts. My compatriots here at the Hotel Bunda, Davos, giggle nervously and do that ‘scary’ thing with their eyes and fingers. But as a newly registered entrant in the Zen UltraMarathon of Life, I don’t see what all the fuss